It all begins with a smile!!

Sunday morning at 8 am the grandmother of Christine came at our door. She needed a certain medicine, she told us that Christine was admitted in the hospital and that she was very sick. Later that day Simon and I went to see Christine in the hospital. We found Christine in the Feeding centre, very malnourished, she was walking a bit, but she was very weak. We spoke with the nurse and the nurse agreed that it would be better to take Christine to Amecet. The grandmother wanted to go home and leave Christine behind without a caretaker. Christine was happy to come with us. She is 12 years old and her weight is only 15 kg. We have been with her already to get an x-ray, blood tests, sputum tests and with all the results back to the doctor today. They are looking into changing her ARV's, because the medicines she was taking don't seem to help her. TB is still an option also, she is still very weak and we need God's help to see her come through!

In the last two weeks we got now in total 3 girls, who have been with us in the past , went home very fine, but because one or the other reason they

suddenly fell back. Immaculate, also 12 years old, also on ARV's lost a lot of weight, and is very weak. She doesn't like to eat, every bite is an enormous effort. And then we got Mary, she is 15 years old, and is also on ARV's, but has fallen sick and is loosing weight. All three girls are orphans and we think that they have not taken the ARV medicines on the right way. We have been going with all of them for tests, doctor consults and we hope and pray that they will start picking up.

It is so sad to see those girls, teenagers, sitting like old ladies on our veranda, they just can't do more than that. But they're already starting to smile, that is a good beginning!!

Christine (12), Immaculate (12) and Mary (15)

P.S. ARV's are medicines which are given to HIV+ patients to slow down HIV virus in the blood. There is still no cure found for HIV/AIDS.